Happy New Years to each and everyone on net tractor talk!!!
Happy New Years
- Thread starter thunderdome
- Start date
bczoom we barely made it to watch the ball drop from new York and the peach drop in Atlanta. After that it was snooze city.
Thank Ya'll. HAPPY NEW YEAR to ya'll too. collie
I didn't even try to make it to midnight.
My 9-5 job is I develop and maintain computer systems for major hospital systems.
Right now, I'm working for one of the largest hospital systems (top 50 in the Country) supporting a major system. Part of my responsibilities is 24/7 on-call for 1 week per month. I volunteered for this week since I haven't had a holiday on-call and wanted to give the other people a break. No problem as it's a quiet week.... until I realized I volunteered for year-end processing. Oh crap. That starts at midnight and burns the mainframe's CPU for all of Jan 1. Any burps must be fixed immediately and you can't stop until it's done. I went to bed early to get a few hours in before SHTF. Knock on wood, it's been running damn near perfectly.
My 9-5 job is I develop and maintain computer systems for major hospital systems.
Right now, I'm working for one of the largest hospital systems (top 50 in the Country) supporting a major system. Part of my responsibilities is 24/7 on-call for 1 week per month. I volunteered for this week since I haven't had a holiday on-call and wanted to give the other people a break. No problem as it's a quiet week.... until I realized I volunteered for year-end processing. Oh crap. That starts at midnight and burns the mainframe's CPU for all of Jan 1. Any burps must be fixed immediately and you can't stop until it's done. I went to bed early to get a few hours in before SHTF. Knock on wood, it's been running damn near perfectly.
Kanook
Active member
That ain't no 9-5er...I know of what you speak. I spent 40 years (1968-2008) carrying a pager and then a blackberry and being a slave to the whims of those big mean mainframes. They always needed attention on holidays and other times that 'normal' people got to spend eating turkey and drinking beer. After retiring it took me 2 years to not jump out of the la-z-boy everytime a pager went off on a TV show. Everything from BigBlue 360's to modern day servers(well modern in 2008). Don't miss it a bit. Made lots of money waiting around for something to go meltdown on Dec 31 1999 (Y2K).
A prosperous New Years one and all.
I call it my "9 to 5" as it's the paying job to cover the expenses of my after-work hobbies.
I was startled awake about 3AM to the phone. It was a phone ringing in a dream that jolted me out of the bed.
I too started on System 360's. I don't even know the models/series anymore but they're fast and the best thing is that DASD is cheap so everyone has tons of it which is handy. No more counting bits or bytes.
I was startled awake about 3AM to the phone. It was a phone ringing in a dream that jolted me out of the bed.
I too started on System 360's. I don't even know the models/series anymore but they're fast and the best thing is that DASD is cheap so everyone has tons of it which is handy. No more counting bits or bytes.
Kanook
Active member
I much prefer pushing and blowing snow around to earn a few extra pennies now.. no more NAS/SAN/Raid devices calling home in the middle of the nite to rouse me from visions of sugar plums and lollypops (and the occasional scantily clad damsel) dancing in my head. Still occasionally get roused in the middle of the nite but it's the roads dept snowplow alerting me to get the RTV (or tractor) warmed up to clear out the 16 driveways I keep clear this year.
I'm another one that spent many years hanging around the house phone, then carrying a pager, then a cell phone while waiting for those late night or weekend calls. I probably date you guys a little bit as I started with punch card equipment, then 1401's and a 7010, then 360 & 370. I liked the 4341s best of all because it seemed like they never went down.
I retired before all the server farms came, so have no idea what's involved with them.
Bob
Kanook
Active member
I actually started out on punch card unit record..o24 key punch and 056 verifier. Moved on to tabulating and accounting machines. A least favorite was a 557 card interpreter that dutifully self destructed about once a year, mangling the lifter arms into pretzels and requiring complete disassembly. Good old days when white shirt and tie were mandatory even if you were in grease up to your elbows working on a 082 card sorter. Yes those 4341 were good little number crunchers. Spent the final 25 years before retiring working for a Japanese out fit that did a remakably good job of imitating Big Blue 'big iron'.
Had a big breasted keypunch operator who's hooters used to tap the keyboard space bar causing service calls for 'skipped columns. Took some sensitive discussion with her elderly supervisor to get to the resolution..
AH!....The good ole days.
I "played" with punch cards but they were still in use. My Dad was teaching computer sciences at a college and I'd go in with him sometimes. Always had a ton of them at home to play cards or whatever kids < 8 would want to do with them.
The 4341/4381 were solid machines. The new ones are really good. I've been at this location for 8 months now and I can't even think the word IPL has been mentioned. Heck, they leave the CICS regions up for weeks and weeks.
The 4341/4381 were solid machines. The new ones are really good. I've been at this location for 8 months now and I can't even think the word IPL has been mentioned. Heck, they leave the CICS regions up for weeks and weeks.
Kanook
Active member
Way back when I was a 21 year old key punch mechanic, one of the sites I looked after ways a big oil company where they received the credit card 51 col punch cards that you signed when using the gas co credit card and was picked up by the tanker driver when he delivered gas to the station. They would show up to be keypunched secured in bundles held by elastic bands and often smeared in who knows what. Card jams galore. High Tech back then....Have difficulty understanding the wifes iPad or Windows 8.x on a non touch screen pc.....Obsolete is what I is!